Do I Belong Here?

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

It's a little over a year since bass player, backing vocalist and setlist compiler Melanie Howard left The Wedding Present for reasons as yet unknown. Mel's husband Nick Wellauer, the band's then-drummer, left too. Reading between those lines, it is easy and perhaps tempting to surmise that it wasn't an entirely amicable or positive separation. In her statement at the time, Mel talked of refocusing on her solo career as Such Small Hands in the future. Let's hope so, because she is such a talent.

Take today's track, for example. It's an acoustic rendition of Do I Belong Here? from the 2021 Raw Home Sessions version of Carousel. Mel herself described it thus:

Each song is just my voice and my guitar, recorded down one microphone across two afternoons in March, while my cat snoozed next to me in my living room.

I attempted to do everything in one take and keep it as ‘live’ and unedited as possible (with the exception of an odd couple of harmonies and extra parts) - as if the listener was there in the room with me - and so I have intentionally left in any little imperfections because I felt it was more authentic.

To which I will only add, it's beautiful. Sublime, even.

More than a year later, I remain gutted that Mel left The Wedding Present, because she really added to it, giving lie to the old joke that the band is simply "Gedge & three other people". Still, she lasted about five and a half years, which is more than most people do at the Gedge of the sea. Don't keep us waiting too long for new solo material please, Mel.